


Waiting to Hold You

by seraphim_grace



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Character Turned Into a Ghost, Future Fic, Ghosts, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-04
Updated: 2010-08-04
Packaged: 2017-10-10 22:54:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/105301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraphim_grace/pseuds/seraphim_grace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes the end is where things begin</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting to Hold You

#### Waiting to Hold You

  
\----

The song was lovely and distant, played on an acoustic guitar by a busker in the street. Dean knew it well. He walked up to the young man, who could have been any young man in any city dressed in ratty clothes, playing folk music with his guitar, and dropped a few bills in the case. "There's a twenty in it for you if you stop playing that song."

"Sure, Mister," the boy snuffled, wiping at his nose "anything you want me to play instead."

"Nah," Dean told him unfolding another note, "just not that song, 'kay."

He went back to Sam who was sitting at the outside coffee table of a mid priced coffee shop, picking at some funnily named sandwich. "I thought you liked that song," Sam said.

"I did," Dean emptied his cup, which had a fancy name for what was just plain black coffee. "Things change."

"You used to listen to it all the time," Sam continued and then stopped, realising, "yeah, happens to us all, playing songs to death." It was a cover up and Dean knew it, but was grateful for the charade. It was the little lies that got him through the day.

Sam didn't need to know why he didn't like the song any more. It was just one more little sacrifice made to save the world.

It was also the first time he'd seen his brother in a month, meeting Sam downtown for coffee before he left again, he was a self imposed Pariah even if he had, for the most part, stopped Hunting.

As much as he'd wanted to, Dean couldn't stop travelling - searching for himself Sam said with a laugh, offering him a bed in his new apartment, a place in his new life, but Dean always demurred. Home was the Impala and a long road.

 

***

 

Dean talked to the empty passenger seat, made jokes with it, told it about his day. As he drove, he told it funny stories and memories. He wouldn't tell Sam these things but he had always been able to tell Cas anything. As soon as he and Cas started talking Dean just didn't stop.

"I like that song you know," his ghost Cas said back.

"I know, but it's no fun if you're not around to sing it."

Castiel wasn't in the passenger seat, he had always sat in the back, but that was where Dean's mind had placed him and that was where Dean felt him the strongest. So, as Dean rode along hot roads, filled with fields of Kansas wheat sashaying in the breeze, he talked to Castiel, and was home.

 

***

 

Dean was a bit of a chick when it came to kissing.

He loved kissing, and men weren't supposed to, he knew that. He knew guys were supposed to be all about the goal, but kissing was good and Dean was good at it. He loved kissing under the rain, or the flavour of someone's mouth. He loved that it could be plundering or tender or chaste or wanting.

He had wanted to kiss Castiel very badly towards the end.

They had been lying on the motel bed, not drunk but stupidly happy. One of those days that started good and just kept getting better, neither of them were ready for reality just quite yet. The TV was stuck on VH1 of all things and they were playing a kind of music for people who didn't really like music and hadn't bothered to form an opinion.

Castiel had been wearing Dean's clothes for weeks now, because Dean just couldn't bear the sight of the suit anymore, and so he lay on the bed next to him giggling like he was high in a gray Wal-Mart wife beater and black jeans and it was so stupidly funny that Bart Simpson was staring out from the hem at his ankle. All Dean could think of was that bit in the cartoon where Ned Flanders had been revealed to be the Devil and although he had introduced himself to everyone he'd just said "Hey, Bart," like they were old friends.

That had been pretty funny too.

The ads in the break were so damn cheesy you could have made a sandwich with them and when Dean said that Castiel just fell apart again.

Dean had obviously rubbed off on him, taking time to appreciate the little things, the human things, like ice cream and music and plain old laughter. After all Batman never laughed at the Joker's pranks, and ultimately that was why he kept coming back. So Dean made a point to laugh when he could, to combat despair, and despite Sam's disapproving looks Castiel laughed with him.

The kiss came out of nowhere, fumbling through giggles and then the song started up slow and bluesy with a soft female voice singing and all the way through it Castiel kissed him and Dean thought, "Hell, if this is it, at least I've had this."

There had been nothing else, just kissing, lying there on the motel bed with their legs twisted together while listening to the woman serenade them

"I like this song," Castiel said finally, his head beside Dean's on the stinking motel pillow. And then like he had heard it a million times before he began to sing it under his breath. _"Sail to me, sail to me, let me enfold you."_

 

***

 

"Sammy's doing well," Dean told the empty passenger seat, "I think he's put some weight on. You were right, Sarah is good for him, I think she's putting a little extra on his plate at meal times. Of course if he gets any bigger they're going to have to keep him in SHIELD just in case he starts eating the scientists again."

Imaginary Castiel laughed because he got the joke, there had been a lot of comics since the end of the world - comics, novels, even nonfiction. He read anything and everything, audio books stuck in the Impala's ancient tape deck. Of all the things Castiel really liked Jeeves and Wooster, laughing at all the right places.

"Don't you think you deserve that too . . . what Sam has?" Castiel asked.

"Me, nah, someone's got to do this job," he rolled his shoulders, shifting the car into fifth, "saving people, killing things."

"You haven't hunted in nearly a year." Castiel voiced from the passenger seat, his hair fuckswept and blowing in the wind from the open window. "You went to Jersey to hunt the local devil and ended up in Atlantic City reading SlaughterHouse 5."

"I like that book," Dean argued, feeling little put out. "I like to read, it's nice having the time and not having someone complaining or having to drive or -"

"I know, Love, ever think it might be what you want?"

"What?" Dean put his foot a little heavier on the gas. "To read?"

"There are plenty of books in the world, Love," Castiel said, "stories to share." Cas always called him Love as if to remind him of what existed between them, just in case Dean forgot.

"I'm not ready," Dean's voice was like broken glass in cream, the lump in his throat impossible to swallow past. "I . . . I'm not ready. I haven't seen the Grand Canyon, or the world's largest ball of twine."

"I'm not going to leave you, Dean," the voice in his head said, turning to look out the window at the billowing wheat in the afternoon. "Do you think love like this happens every day?" And Dean laughed because it was the right thing to say and it was what he needed to hear.

 

***

 

Dean's relationship with Castiel started slowly, a year and a half of dancing around it and then another few months of plucking up the courage to get past first base and then Castiel was gone. As he lay there bleeding on the firmament, teeth red with blood and hands futilely trying to find purchase on his bleeding chest, Dean knelt beside him and begged and pleaded and cursed and Castiel raised his left hand, bloody and tired and started to sing, softly under his breath.

_For you sang, "Touch me not, touch me not, come back tomorrow."_

_Oh my heart, oh my heart shies from the sorrow._

_I'm as puzzled as a newborn child._

_I'm as riddled as the tide._

_Should I stand amid the breakers?_

_Or shall I lie with _death_ my bride?_

His breaths started to take longer between words, the pauses between them counting out one heart beat, two, three. Then his eyes were more than blue, were sonic blue, angel blue, and then he was gone as Dean continued the song under his breath.

 _Hear me sing: "Swim to me, swim to me, let me enfold you."_

_"Here I am. Here I am, waiting to hold you."_

 

***

 

There was a "Help Wanted" sign in a small second hand bookshop in a town Dean couldn't pronounce the name of. "You got any experience with books?" The shopkeeper asked.

"No, Sir, only that I love to read them."

The shopkeeper softened, "What's your favourite author?" He was waiting for the inevitable, some schlocky writer that he had heard the name of just because he wanted the job.

"Vonnegut," Dean answered, "everyone thinks I should love Kerouac because I made my living driving across the states, but Vonnegut really. I like the way he strings together his words, like they don't make sense until they're just right."

The shopkeeper looked him up and down, weighing him, "You a hunter?" He paused, "had a few of them in here, looking for odd books." From under the counter he pulled a bottle of red wine and two glasses, "Odd folks, said apocalypse was coming, would you know anything about that?"

Dean just grinned, "It's been here and gone," he shrugged "end of it gave me time to get some reading in."

As the shopkeeper, who introduced himself as Bernard, poured the wine Dean knew he had the job. There was a small live in apartment if he wanted it, out of his pay check of course, and he could read anything he wanted as long as he put it back when he was done.

It sounded too good to be true, but sitting there on a pile of books, visible only in the shop mirror with eyes of sonic blue was Castiel wearing one of Dean's old tees as he grinned, and then he opened his mouth and sang

"_Hear me sing:_ _"Swim to me, swim to me, let me enfold you."_

_"Here I am. Here I am, waiting to hold you."_

 

***

 

"You shouldn't be alone," Sam said down the phone with that irritating _I'm happy and just want you to be happy too_ smugness. Sarah really was good for him, Dean was right all those years ago when they first met.

When they first met Dean told Sam that if he wasn't going to take her out to dinner right then, then he was going to.

  
Sam just wanted Dean to be happy.

Dean had saved the world, surely he was allowed to kick back and relax.

"You know what Sammy, I'm not lonely," he said, "I've got you, and my job which I unexpectedly love, and I'm not ready yet."

"It's been two years," Sam's voice was tinny.

"And?" Dean answered because imaginary Cas was sitting on the couch, looking at the book of photographs Dean had brought upstairs so they could talk. It was just a coffee table book, but Castiel liked those best.

"I just," And God dammit Sam was whining. He was about to admit that he felt guilty because he was happy and Dean wasn't.

"I saved the world, Sam," Dean told him in a low quiet voice. "I put Lucifer back in the pit, I went to Hell and I fought alongside the legions of Heaven, but I still leave my boxers everywhere and don't dry the floor when I shower." He sounded resigned and a little lost. "There's not another person who can say that they have done what I have done and not one that can understand. I'm not lonely, Sammy, I have my books and . . ." he paused. "I'm not drinking either. I'm just . . ."

"Waiting?" Sam asked. And across the room, over a glossy photograph of the Vatican Castiel sang, _"Waiting to hold you."_ And Dean just grinned.


End file.
